A Strong Case For The Value of Your Hyperlocal Site and Email List

Today, a lesson on just how valuable your hyperlocal website and the email list you build along with it can truly be.

In May, my sister and I were tasked with selling a house that we came to own together after our mother passed away last year.

In addition to the usual methods of putting a sign in the yard, placing an ad in the paper and throwing it up on Zillow (keep in mind I was not an active Realtor like I am now at the time), I figured hey, why not write about it and send a link out to my email subscribers?

You can see the article I wrote here: http://www.floridaforboomers.com/key-colony/

I sent about 4,000 emails to my list from FloridaforBoomers.com, and I also sent out to a list of about 6,000 from TheVillagesFloridaBook.com.

My Florida for Boomers list is made upon more than 35,000 people interested in moving to Florida, and even though the house I was selling is about 2 hours away from The Villages, I know that one thing people considering The Villages struggle with is that its so far away from the beach, so I decided to send to them to. My thinking was that this house would be a perfect weekend getaway for someone with a home in The Villages.

Here’s the text of one of the emails I sent to my list:

Right inbox at the right time?

Thousands of email subscribers clicked through to view the article, and from that I had a total of 4 people fill out the form I placed at the bottom of that post seeking more information.

The fourth person to contact me happened to be the personal assistant to someone on my Villages list who got my email, lives in The Villages now, but “might be interested in a beach get-away.”

I set up a time for him to come see it, he shot a video of the house using his iPad, took it to the interested buyer (his boss), she liked it, made an offer and we accepted.

The buyer never even set foot in the house herself.

Awesome. I just sold a house through my email list!

But wait, there’s more…

I was curious, where exactly did this person come from…how did she get on my email list?

So I fired up aweber and searched using her email address, and here’s what I saw:

Holy cow…not only did I sell a house via my hyperlocal site, but this person joined my list from an ad on FACEBOOK back in July of 2012. I spend thousands of dollars a month marketing on Facebook, and this is precisely how this particular buyer got on my email list.

After this experience, here are a few takeaways…

1. Focus on building your email list. Your site exists to build your list. Without my email list, this particular sale doesn’t happen.

2. Don’t under estimate the power of what you are building with your hyperlocal site. I think you’ll be amazed what your site and resulting email list can accomplish for you. Yes, there is a sizeable time and monetary investment involved with getting it off the ground, but focus on the long game.

3. Let’s hear it for Facebook ads. It’s easily the marketing channel with the highest ROI right now, and we should all take advantage of that fact while we can.